


Maybe the Name

by Ladycat



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Team
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-12
Updated: 2014-02-12
Packaged: 2018-01-12 02:48:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,227
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1181017
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ladycat/pseuds/Ladycat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Except Rodney can’t get up. Not yet.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Maybe the Name

_“You must breathe, Rodney. In and out. Listen to the wind within yourself, the music of your body.”_

***

All of them have a love-hate relationship with the infirmary. It’s not something they can escape no matter how much they might like the nurses—well, some of them—or how fond all of them are of Beckett’s perennial resistance to just about everything. They’re here too much, patient and visitor both, to ever truly be comfortable. Pain’s ink is indelible.

The chair Rodney sits on is cracked low on the back, the edges cutting past his shirt until he can feel it along the bones of his spine.

“You should lie down,” Keller says, frowning with a mother’s blanketing care at the three of them. She’s too skinny to be anybody’s mother, but nagging-rights are ageless. “All of you, you look kinda worn out. I could pull over beds?”

They don’t respond. And they don’t lie down.

***

_“The goal is to find your center, the place within you that is perfectly at peace.”_

_“Oh, please, I couldn’t take that when it was new-aged bullshit—”_

_“—are you implying something about my people’s beliefs?”_

_“.... no. Of course not.”_

_“There is a place within you that is calm, at peace and in sync with the rest of life. You must find it.”_

***

Half an hour in and Ronon abruptly stands up. He’s towering, grey-matted dreads darkening a face already caked with dirt and sweat, blood that no one’s been able to wipe away brackish against the pallor of his skin. He looks like a true mountain man, green and brown and unconquerable as he paces back and forth, back and forth, unending and unyielding. He looks feral.

Abruptly he whirls, quicker than anyone’s eyes can track, slamming a fist into the wall.

There’s a dent when he pulls back, a red smear in one depression.

“Did that help?” Sheppard asks. His eyes are dull, lifeless as he slips into a mode Rodney’s seen in every stripe and rank of military personnel, a mode that he and his scientists have found out of necessity: the ability to sit and wait, unthinking, unmoving, knowing just how useless, how _futile_ each passing moment is.

Ronon grunts softly. When he moves, dust and debris shakes loose from his hair. A nurse attempts to check on him, pinched face a testament to the scolding she knows better than to voice. “Nothing’s broken,” Ronon says. He pulls his hand away, turning his back on her as he returns to his seat.

Sheppard leans back so his head touches the wall, sighing gustily. “That’s not what I asked.”

* * *

_“Do you hear it, Rodney? I hear it within you. Breathe in and out, in... and out... yes. Good.”_

* * *

Elizabeth sits with them for a while, but her vigils are of a different kind. She touches each of their shoulders, whispers teasing imprecations tinged with commands she knows will not be obeyed: go and rest, let others take up the burden, reward themselves for a job well done. They don’t. It is not done, nor well at all.

It is her job to pretend, to offer them the respite they cannot take.

“Carson,” she says, slim and tall and as fragile as a narrow sliver of glass, stronger than the spires that make up their home.

Carson sighs, haggard and old as he slumps into his own chair. They talk often of replacing them, making them more comfortable. For three years they’ve talked of this, and they’ll continue on three years more. “It’s touch and go, of course. They did what they could, but.”

“It’s all just _voodoo_ ,” Rodney whispers, his voice a crow’s harsh accusation, while his hands form patterns his grandmother taught him, things he thought long forgotten. “Stupid, useless _voodoo_.”

He doesn’t start when something clinks gently into his hands. He has no energy for surprise, nor for questions. So when Elizabeth opens her mouth, eyes alight and burning at the rosary Sheppard’s plucked from his boot, handing it to Rodney with as much care as a pencil hastily transferred, Rodney looks at her. Just looks.

Elizabeth closes her mouth. She nods to them as she leaves, drawing any straggles with her.

In the gloom of twilight, Rodney counts, thumb caressing the water-slick feel of each curved bead, while beside him Sheppard mutters the prayers.

* * *

_“This is where you must go, Rodney. This will be a shield for you to rest upon, to tame your body and calm your mind, a bluff to protect yourself. It is my gift to you.”_

_“Don’t say things like that.”_

_“Do not refuse the only thing I can offer you.”_

* * *

It’s ten hours later when the curtain pulls back, folds catching motionless air to dance to some unheard tune. “We got it,” the doctor—gloved and masked, hidden behind pale, pale blue—says. There is joy underneath the paper cloth he wears. Relief. “We got it.”

Ronon faints. He is subtle about it, only slumping deeper in his seat, but it is not sleep that takes him when his eyes close; three nurses appear silently, hauling him onto a bed and wheeling him back to his own curtained alcove. Sheppard actually sways to his feet, brushing aside all attempts to help. Only Rodney’s shoulder is good enough to lean upon when he’s like this.

Except Rodney can’t get up. Not yet.

“Here, Colonel,” Carson says, as if to a cranky, exhausted child, carefully drawing him back to his own bed, his own nurses who will strip and clean him, bandage the hurts that tear his skin, the injuries that bleed bright, bright red.

Listing to the right, Sheppard still manages to turn without falling, eyes not focusing as they seek out Rodney’s still form. “Hey. You too, McKay.”

“Yes, of course. In a minute.”

“Not that long. Doc needs to check you out, make sure you’re okay.”

But he is, he knows. He is okay. His hurts are minor. He was protected beneath three strong, heart-warm bodies then, for all his hands are stained brown, his cheeks scored with dark, dried trails.

He is protected now by a place of peace, a moment of gold-touched bliss that smells of sandalwood and jasmine, that he carries within him. It calms his breathing and soothes his whirling, terrified mind, allowing him to wait. To hope.

* * *

_“That is never all you can offer me. How can you even think such a thing?”_

_“It is what I wish most for you to have, Rodney. Accept it from me, please.”_

* * *

When she wakes, still streaked with sweat, her tiny body hidden underneath blankets the color of a summer’s cloud, her hand is held by three others, all larger, rougher, and broader than her own. It is the left hand for all of them, and all bear rings of a metal called _alke_ , found only on the planet that allows Atlantis berth.

The metal is neither gold nor silver, burnished nor matte, but somehow all four and more. Teyla smiles down at the melding, caressing metal that still yearns to be one again. “I am well,” she says. Her thumb curls, resting particularly on Rodney’s ring, the broad, sturdy finger that carries it. “Are you?”

* * *

_“I do. I mean. I did. But I do now, too. I—”_

_“Hush. It is well.”_

* * *

“We’re fine,” Rodney says. “We’re here.”


End file.
